My Unsolicited Advice on Giving Unsolicited Advice

We all - or should at least - appreciate the value of a good piece of advice. To quote one of the great poets of our generation, Pitbull: “ask for money and get advice; ask for advice and get money twice”. It shouldn't surprise us that the global consulting industry is valued at approximately $250 billion. People pay big money for good advice.

Here’s where it gets more complex though. Unless explicitly asked, giving advice is not as helpful as people think, and it can do more harm than good. Let me explain why.

The Difference a Question Makes

Take a simple example. I come across an issue at work, so I go to my dad, who has 35+ years of experience in an office job, and ask him what he would do. I’ve put myself forward. I’ve decided I want to learn how he would handle the situation. Whatever he says, however direct or blunt, lands as help, because I asked for it.

Now flip the dynamic. Someone comes up to me, unprompted, and tells me what I should do about something I never brought up. It’s a completely different exchange, even if the advice itself is identical. It can come across as rude, because the implicit message is “I’ve decided you’re doing this wrong.” It induces stress, because now I’m managing not just my own situation but also this person’s expectation that I’ll act on what they said. And most importantly, it quietly forces me to think through their worldview instead of my own - because to reject the advice, I now have to justify myself to them. And even if I do reject it, my pushback can slide into “leave me alone” energy and come across as being unwilling to listen or learn.

And once it’s been said out loud, it takes up space in your head whether you want it to or not.

Why We Do It Anyway

Everyone does it. Friends, colleagues, strangers, me included. And that’s kind of the point. It’s such a normal reflex that we don’t stop to notice how it lands on the other side. The question is why.

After rubbing my head - and, notably, without asking anyone for advice on how to write this article - I think it comes down to two things.

1. It’s about us more than we’d like to admit.

   This is the uncomfortable one. Giving unsolicited advice, if you strip it down, is an act that centres the giver. There are a few layers to it.

   The first is validation. If I tell someone to do something and they do it, and it works out, my way of seeing things has been confirmed by someone else’s life. That’s a rare and quietly addictive feeling, a kind of secondhand proof that I’m right about how the world works.

   The second is self-promotion. Am I giving you advice because I want to help, or because I want to signal that I’ve been there, that I’ve figured something out, that I have something worth listening to? Advice can be a socially acceptable way of talking about yourself. It disguises “let me tell you about me” as “let me help you”.

   And the third, the one that sounds worst out loud, is a sense of superiority. Because no matter how gently it’s delivered, unsolicited advice always carries the same underlying structure: “I know something about this that you don’t, so listen to me”. Most people don’t mean it that way. But that is, broken down, what’s happening.

2. The desire to help - but even that’s complicated.

   This one’s more generous, and probably closer to what most people would say if you asked them why they give advice. They want to help. And in a lot of cases, that’s true.

   But there’s a whole school of thought in philosophy - psychological egoism, most often traced back to Hobbes and Bentham - that argues every voluntary action we take is ultimately motivated by self-interest, even the ones that look like altruism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Helping someone, on this view, isn’t really about them. It’s about the feeling we get from having helped. Not everyone buys the theory, and it’s genuinely hard to prove one way or the other, but I find the honest version of it uncomfortable and probably close to true. When I give advice, I’d like to think it comes from wanting to help. But if I’m being honest, some part of it is that helping feels good - and I want that feeling.

The Parent - Children Dynamic

At this point I’d like to clarify that I’m not adamant in my opinion, nor do I think there aren’t exceptions to the rule. A mother giving advice to her kids isn’t doing it to get something in return - she’s looking out for them. But here’s the catch: is that advice good? Well, it depends.

When a parent tells an eight-year-old to sit down and do their homework before playing, that’s not really advice - it’s closer to an instruction. And it makes sense. An eight-year-old doesn’t have the experience to weigh the importance of education against the pull of play and decide for themselves. They need guidance, and they’re not in a position to ask for it because they don’t yet know what they don’t know. That’s a different ball game entirely.

But there’s a point - maybe around high school, maybe later - where that same dynamic stops being guidance and starts becoming projection. When a parent tells a seventeen-year-old what to study, who to spend time with, or what kind of life to aim for, the advice isn’t filling a gap in knowledge anymore. It’s replacing the kid’s own process of figuring things out with the parent’s version of how things should go. And that’s exactly the problem I described earlier - it forces someone to think through your worldview instead of developing their own.

What it All Boils Down to

We all have things to learn from eachother. The goal of this article is to encourage a thoughtful approach to giving and receiving advice, not to make people feel bad about their choices.

Advice isn’t bad. Giving it isn’t bad. Receiving it isn’t bad either. But there’s a small, honest question worth asking before the words leave your mouth: did they ask?

If they did, by all means share your insights and experiences. If they didn’t, there’s a decent chance what you’re about to say is more for you than it is for them.

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